Raiders lost gamble against Chiefs, but they can’t lose their nerve

LAS VEGAS — If you have a problem with Klint Kubiak calling his shot at halftime Sunday, all but guaranteeing the Raiders would beat the Chiefs, have at it.

If you want to question his decision to take three points off the board in the third quarter, when presented with a more manageable fourth down, the floor is yours.

And if you spent the drive home wondering about the all-out blitz that left rookie safety Treydan Stukes chasing Tyquan Thornton across the field with the Raiders protecting a 19-17 fourth-quarter lead, there is plenty to discuss.

The Raiders lost for the first time this season, 30-27, to the Chiefs at Allegiant Stadium. The decisions that helped shape that outcome are fair game. That comes with the headset and the responsibility of trying to drag this franchise somewhere it has spent far too little time lately.

Just understand something before demanding that Kubiak turn down the temperature.

The confidence, the aggression, the willingness to put the game in his players’ hands?

Those are going to be permanent fixtures.

And they should be.

“He’s coming in to win, he’s not coming in to keep it close,” Raiders quarterback Kirk Cousins said.

The Raiders are building a team that expects to win these games. A team willing to put pressure on its opponents and accept the pressure that comes back the other way. A team that sees an opportunity to finish off the Chiefs and reaches for it.

Sunday, that reach exceeded their grasp.

That hurts. It also leaves plenty to correct.

But the worst lesson the Raiders could take from their first loss under Kubiak would be that they need to become more afraid of losing.

They have spent enough years giving everyone reasons to expect the worst. A coach willing to stand in front of a television camera at halftime and say he expects the best is hardly something to discourage.

“Gotta be better, but you know what? We’re winning. We’re gonna win the game,” Kubiak told CBS’ Tracy Wolfson at halftime.

The Raiders led 13-10 at the time.

Kubiak was wrong about the result.

He was right about what his team needed to hear.

And he wasn’t about to back down after the loss.

“That’s how I felt,” Kubiak said. “I just said what I felt.”

Think about the alternative. What, exactly, was Kubiak supposed to communicate with the Raiders leading Kansas City? That he hoped they could hang around? That perhaps the Chiefs might be generous enough to leave the door open?

His players had spent a half earning the lead. Their coach believed they could spend another half finishing the job.

The problem was that they didn’t.

And there were substantive football reasons for that, beginning with a running game that continues to make too many ordinary situations feel like extraordinary challenges.

That is where the scrutiny needs to be relentless.

Kubiak’s offense needs a dependable way to move defenders and generate yards on the ground. Until the Raiders develop one, protecting leads will be harder, short-yardage decisions will be more complicated and too much will fall on the passing game.

Confidence cannot block anyone.

Neither can a halftime declaration secure a kickoff return. Dareke Young’s fourth-quarter fumble changed the entire dynamic of the game and compounded the damage at the worst possible time. Kenneth Walker immediately scored on a 22-yard run to put the Chiefs up 30-10 with just over three minutes left.

Those are failures the Raiders have to own.

So is the execution of the pressure call that put Stukes in a footrace with Thornton on third down with the Raiders holding a 19-17 lead. When a defense commits that aggressively, it accepts the possibility of being exposed behind it. Against Patrick Mahomes, the consequences can be immediate.

It is entirely reasonable to ask whether that was the right matchup to risk.

An aggressive philosophy still requires sound judgment. Kubiak and his staff cannot simply stamp “this is who we are” on every failed decision and consider the discussion closed.

They have to examine the protection, the coverage, the personnel and the situation. They have to determine whether the call gave their players a reasonable chance to succeed.

Then they have to be willing to make an aggressive call again.

That is the distinction that matters.

“We’re gonna be aggressive,” Kubiak said. “Sometimes you win in that situation, sometimes it goes the other way. That’s part of being a competitor.”

A bad result demands a review. It does not automatically invalidate the thinking that preceded it.

On this day, Thornton came up with the 55-yard catch to put the Chiefs in position to score the go-ahead touchdown on Walker’s 2-yard run to make it 23-19. On the other side of that coin was Stukes, a second-round pick from Arizona whom the Raiders have high hopes for and believe will come up with the stop more often than not.

Understandably, the outcome stung the young defensive back. But he also appreciated the confidence the coaching staff showed in him.

“It fuels us,” he said.

The same applies to the third-quarter decision to surrender a field goal for an opportunity to extend the possession and stretch the lead from three to 10 rather than settle for a six-point cushion.

Losing by three makes those three points impossible to ignore. It also makes it awfully tempting to pretend the rest of the game would have unfolded exactly the same way had the Raiders kept them.

Football does not provide that convenient a rewind button.

Kubiak saw an opportunity to pursue more. His offense failed to deliver when Cousins’ fourth-down pass to Ashton Jeanty fell incomplete, leaving the Raiders with a 13-10 advantage.

“I don’t regret it,” Kubiak said of the decision. “I regret not getting it.”

Both the decision and the execution deserve examination. But retreating into the safest available choice every time would carry a cost, too.

“If you come in here trying to just hang around with a good football team, it may not pan out the way you want,” Cousins said. “So I feel like we need to attack; I just wish, by me, there was better execution at moments that would have given us a chance to come out on top.”

For a franchise trying to close the gap on the opponent that walked out of its stadium with another victory, learning to embrace those moments, and deliver in them, is practically a requirement.

On Sunday, they tried. They were not good enough to finish.

That is a painful distinction, but an important one.

As Alice Cooper’s halftime concert took a portion of the Allegiant Stadium crowd back to the 1970s, the Raiders were trying to establish a little of their own enduring identity.

Foot on the pedal. Belief in their players. A willingness to live with the responsibility of going for it.

There will be more afternoons when that approach makes stomachs turn. More decisions that invite second-guessing. More losses that make the conservative alternative look awfully attractive after the fact.

There also needs to be growth. Better blocking. Better ball security. Better execution when a coach’s confidence becomes a player’s assignment.

That is how the calculation eventually changes. How the same willingness to attack becomes the difference in winning a game like Sunday’s and, perhaps someday, reaching a much bigger stage.

The Raiders have work to do before they get there.

Taking their foot off the pedal won’t get it done.